Mapping Sense of Place in the East of England

Exploring Sense of Place across Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex to understand place-based attachment and meanings in coastal areas

Place attachments refer to the emotional ties that people develop with their places of residence (Lewicka, 2010).

Place attachment is a multidimensional, complex construct which can be quantitatively measured using psychometric scales designed to measure two dimensions of place attachment, place dependence and place identity.

 Place dependence (a functional attachment) reflects the importance of a place in providing features and conditions that support specific goals or desired activities.

 Place identity (an emotional attachment) refers to the symbolic importance of a place as a repository for emotions and relationships that give meaning and purpose to life.

 In the interactive map below we present the place attachement scores for both home attachement and favourite place attachment.

We display the scores for both the Gottwald et al. (2022) 9-items place attachment scale and for the Abbreviated Place Attachment Scale (APAS) (Boley et al., 2021) made of 6 items to measure place attachment. The scores for both scales have been normalised to a range between 0 and 1.

Since the natural and social environment may also play significant roles in forming place attachment, we have included scores related to nature connectedness and social bonds (scores for social bonds are available only for attachment to favourite coastal places) in the interactive map.

Interactive map user guide:

  • Click on the button below to visualize the interactive map guide
  • Click the button below again to return to the interactive map
  • To visualize the favourite places hotspots, click on the arrow on the right-hand side of the interactive map

The map here reveals several hot spots (yellow areas on the map) of favourite places based on this studies sample. Several hot spots can be identified, the first is in the North Norfolk area around Hunstanton and Cromer. Moving to the Suffolk coast, a very high density of favourite places is found around Lowestoft and Southwold. Further South on the Essex coast we find distinct hot spots around where the outflows of the river Stour and Orwell meet at Harwich. The largest hot spot of favourite places in this sample can be found at Southend on Sea.

Powered by Esri

01 / 06
1

Hunstanton, Norfolk

2

Cromer, Norfolk

3

Lowestoft, Suffolk

4

Southwold, Suffolk

5

Harwich, Essex

6

Southend, Essex

Place meaning is another key component of Sense of Place, and it was used here to describe the reasons for people-coastal places connection in more detail, and explore connections with other cultural ecosystem services

Place meanings associated to the local area were assessed through coding responses to the open text question “What features in your local area do you like?”. Meanings were related to natural features (82 codes), cultural heritage (38 codes) and recreational activities (27 codes) (word-cloud on the left hand side).

The four most frequently used words to describe local area were: quiet, beautiful, rural, peaceful (word-cloud on the right hand side)

To visualize place meanings associated to coastal favourite places, click on the arrow on the right-hand side

Place meanings assessed through the open text question “What features in your favourite coastal place do you like?” were related to natural features (56 codes), cultural heritage (39 codes) and recreational activities (24) (word cloud on the left had side)

The four most frequently used words to describe the favourite place were: beautiful, peaceful, home and beach (word cloud on the right hand side)